Dear White Friends,
Dear White Friends,
I spent years in the white (and Christian) spaces that many of you are in or have come from. I must say, it is one of the most exhausting and confusing spaces ever. As an institution, it carries individuals to practice narratives of racial difference and embeds racial habits in the people that uphold and sustain the value gap—that white lives are valued more than non white lives.
And this is not simply in how one is carried to view people, policing, power, politics, and patriotism but how one sees that they are God’s mechanism to save the world from the "secular"—i.e. everything non white, non conservative, non Christian, non patriotic. It’s almost a political movement with religious rhetoric.
It’s not simply carried by those but also by who one is around, who one votes for, who one reads, who one upholds as moral, beautiful, intelligent, courageous, worthy, across social, political, religious, cultural, and economic spheres. It continues to deeply embed the view that white people are God’s chosen to democratize and save the world, to lead and teach the word, to upend and shape the world.
That is the very embodiment of white supremacy—the practice and principle that white people are the center of existence and that every other person’s legitimacy is tested against their logic and litmus. As one of my professor friends told me, “it’s hard for someone to get it and change when their whole livelihood and identity is built and dependent on them NOT getting it.”
Sadly, you’re playing catch up. But courageously so, and for that, you should be thankful, but not satisfied. For every one of you, there are thousands not like you who have the power to negatively—and have—affect nonwhite people. You must realize that America doesn’t have a reconciliation problem, we have a racist problem.
We have to ask, “Is America a nation with racist and racism or is America a fundamentally racist nation that encourages and sustains racist and racism?” I believe that history teaches us that race as a social, political, and theological construct has been the defining, dehumanizing, and deadly reality in the structure of a society and its outcomes. Though we have made progress, this country is still profoundly shaped by the belief that white lives are more valuable than non-white lives. It is reinforced by what Eddie S. Glaude calls racial habits.
So many go through their lives without ever addressing it. And it’s bad for y’all because models of love and justice just aren’t told or embellished. They are there but so obscure.
This is why I say the struggle for justice, dignity, power, and community means that we must move from sympathy to solidarity. Sympathy feels bad about a situation. Solidarity joins in as a co-laborer to change the situation. Sympathy calls for love without risk. Solidarity calls for risk as love. Sympathy centers the comfort and timetable of those who benefit from a system of difference. Solidarity calls for a revolution of value in a system in which we build a loving and just common life together. We need in the words of Glaude, a revolution of value.
The need is not to widen our compassion through proximity to black people — though important. No, the need is for us to widen our conviction that sees black people as worth loving and fighting for in our social, political, economic, and cultural life.
“The need is not to widen our compassion through proximity to black people — though important. No, the need is for us to widen our conviction that sees black people as worth loving and fighting for in our social, political, economic, and cultural life.”
“We cannot achieve racial justice and create a secure and thriving democracy,” Michelle Alexander writes, “without also transforming our economic systems.” The common life we have now is more built of destruction than dignity, property than people, difference than democracy.
In issuing a clarion call to love, Alexander calls us to move out of cheap calls for progress to finally actualize racial and economic justice. There is a need to learn of our racial past and its present reality. Problems caused by white supremacy must be dismantled through policies and practices that upend this experience of racial difference. Black lives can’t just matter in May and June; they must matter in November and beyond. We must move from passivity to proximity, from sympathy to solidarity, from apathy to activism, from charity to justice.
You have to become that model. Y’all are the leaders you’re looking for. Anti-racist is not a point—it is a practice. Allyship is not a destination—it is a discipline.
Remember, on the other side of courage is community. Keep learning. Keep fighting. As we would say, "keep your foot on the gas."
About the Author
Dante Stewart is a writer and speaker whose works have been featured on Christianity Today, Sojourners, The Witness: A Black Christian Collective, Comment Magazine, and more. He writes and speaks into the areas of race, religion, and politics. He is currently studying at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University. You can reach him at www.dantecstewart.com